Interview with the Vampire's Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman Break Down the 'Poker Game' Between Daniel and Armand in Season 2

[The following contains spoilers for Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Episode 1, "What Can the Damned Really Say to the Damned."]

It's fitting that the Season 2 premiere of Interview with the Vampire would end on a performance. If a major motif this season is theater, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Armand (Assad Zaman) are committing to it wholeheartedly — not just in 1940s Paris, where the series will soon explain how Louis and Claudia (Delainey Hayles) became entangled with the Théâtre des Vampires troupe, but in present-day Dubai as well. Tripped up by a long day of relentless questioning from their interviewer, Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian), Louis and Armand make a plan to take back control in their own way: by playing the part of a happy married couple, much to Daniel's immediate suspicion.

"The question now is why," said Bogosian when he and Zaman stopped by TV Guide's video studio. "Why are they doing this? And so Daniel is always working three-dimensional chess with these characters." The why of it all is always the main question on this show, going back to Louis and Armand concealing Armand's true identity throughout Season 1 — the reason behind which is still unclear. Referring to Armand, Bogosian added, "Also, [Daniel] would do this with anybody, but this guy has already proven to be quite duplicitous, and I don't trust him."

"I think what Armand wants is to sort of get this done as fast as possible," said Zaman, noting Armand's growing impatience with Daniel's digging. "That's the reason they're there together now, is because [they] can streamline it and get it over and done with, and get all the information out that Louis needs to get out."

Some of that information certainly concerns Daniel, whom both Louis and Armand have history with. The details behind whatever happened between them in 1970s San Francisco, when Louis allowed a young Daniel (played by Luke Brandon Field) to interview him for the first time, remain murky — even to Daniel himself. From Zaman's view, the past informs every interaction between Daniel and Armand in the present. "I think maybe there's some of that boiling inside, in the back of Armand's mind," he said.

While those familiar The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice's series of novels on which Interview with the Vampire is based (we see you, "Devil's Minion" fans), already know about the long, messy history between the book versions of Daniel and Armand, the series takes care to ensure that the audience is being treated to something that is entirely its own. The addition of Armand into the interview means a major shift in everything happening inside that baroque Dubai penthouse. While Daniel and Louis might have an established back and forth, Daniel and Armand become occupied with trying to size each other up. A lot of that, said Bogosian, is born out of moments of silence.

"We do a lot of looking at each other," he said of Daniel and Armand. "I do a lot of listening to Jacob, but we do a lot of looking, checking out each other as this relationship continues to go through quite a lot of changes in all the episodes."

Louis, Armand, and Daniel begin the season, in Zaman's words, as "three separate people in the dining room," but by the end of the premiere, they have moved into something a bit more interesting. "This is a poker game between us, and there's things that are visible, and there's things that are invisible," Bogosian said. "And we can't know what the other one doesn't have. And that becomes part of the dynamic of the whole thing as well. Lies on top of lies on top of obfuscation."

Watch the video above for more of Bogosian and Zaman's thoughts.

More on Interview with the Vampire:

• Interview with the Vampire returns once more, with feeling
• The best quotes from the Interview with the Vampire cast we couldn't fit in our cover story
  
• Interview with the Vampire Season 2 review: Another triumph for TV's greatest gothic drama
  

Interview with the Vampire Season 2 airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+.